Today, April 23rd, after months of hype, Intel has officially released the first processors in their new “Core” series: Ivy Bridge. The Ivy Bridge CPUs (or central processing units) are the first processors from Intel that utilize a 22-nm manufacturing procedure (expected to become and remain the new standard until 2013) and “Tri-Gate” technology: a 3-D transistor structure.

It’s said that the new technology powering the Ivy Bridge processors enables the chips to operate at a much lower voltage with minimal “leakage”. Additionally, the 22-nm 3-D Tri-Gate transistors bring an additional 37 percent performance increase over Intel’s now outdated 32-nm planar transistors (used in Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors). Essentially, the new processors offer improved performance while at the same time decreasing power consumption and increasing performance over their predecessors.

Aside from the improved performance and decreased power consumption, Intel’s newest processors also feature built-in support for USB 3.0 – a USB revision that offers ten times faster transfer speeds than the USB 2.0 standard.

The initial batch of Sandy Bridge CPUs includes 13 quad-core processors and while primarily focused on the desktop market, there are several mobile processors that are included in the first release. Also, dual-core Sandy Bridge variants for smaller laptops are set to follow today’s release “later this spring”.

Now that Sandy Bridge processors are officially available, as speculated for months, the upcoming MacBook Pro and iMac refreshes should sport Intel’s latest and greatest. Stay tuned for more coverage on Intel and Apple products.